Is a “War on Adoption” Warranted?
Adoption activists are dedicated to ending predatory practices, commodification and exploitation inherent in adoption
Samantha M. Shapiro has an impressive resume as a writer and journalist, with publications appearing in The New York Times, WIRED Magazine, ESPN, Foreign Policy Magazine, Crain’s New York, The Daily Princetonian.
The first rule of writing I learned early in my career is to write what you know. I cannot help wondering if and what personal connection Ms. Shapiro has to adoption that drew her to write “Adoption Moved to Facebook and a War Began: As the adoption industry migrates to social media, regretful adoptees and birth mothers are confronting prospective parents with their personal pain — and anger” for Wired.
Wired is a digital magazine that describes itself as being cutting edge, illuminating “how technology is changing every aspect of our lives — from culture to business, science to design. The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and new industries.”
The article is somewhat disjointed, approaching the subject of marketing in child adoption and those opposed to it by focusing on vitriolic chatter online. To make her point about a “war” between factions, Shapiro focuses on people with divergent, and in some cases fringe views of child adoption, and only later and to a lesser extent touches on the underlying root of the issue: that the adoption industry has morphed from a social service to find homes for children in need of care, into a free-for-all, demand-driven marketplace in the hands of those seeking children to fill their personal desires, and doing so at any cost, without much concern for the best interest of the child who has become a pawn and a piece of merchandise in the transaction.
To begin with, the title, subtitle and the venue it is published in, seem to imply that adoption on Facebook is a new phenomenon. “As adoption migrates to social media” puts it very much in the here. Facebook, has been in existence for 17 years. Its use by the adoption community for support, search help and activism is not far behind.
Private adoption arrangements, however, were made long before social media and pre-date home use of the internet. As with dating, newspaper ads were used for matchmaking before the advent of the web, and private baby-brokering has a history that dates back further.
The new technological advance that is changing the post-adoption relationships is DNA, which has totally overridden decades of sealed secretive adoption records and revealing heretofore and sometime shocking truths of parentage, roots, and genealogy, yet it is something Shapiro fails to mention at all.
NOT NEW
In 1955 Senator Estes Kefauver led a U.S. congressional investigation into black market adoption as a result of Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home Society operation. Kefauver proposed legislation to criminalize commercial adoption operations placing children across state lines. It exempted licensed adoption agencies. The bill died in the House of Representatives, “in part because several influential representatives knew that their constituents preferred independent adoption” and because of pressure from the agencies that profited. (1)
The Psychology of Adoption was written by David Brodsky in 1990 and discusses independent, private or do-it-yourself adoptions; adoptions “without the anticipation of licensed social agency (p 273) noting that agencies “painted a dire picture of independent adoption tragedies” (p 137).
My first book, shedding light on . . . The Dark Side of Adoption (1988) discusses private or independent adoptions which operated alongside traditional agency adoptions since the 1970s. It tells of a turning point in 1980 when Arty Elgart, aka Mr. Stork, turned his car parts sales abilities into a commercial baby brokering business. After he and his wife struggled to adopt in 1978, Elgart became aware that the huge demand for babies to adopt greatly outpaced the number of babies being placed for adoption. He began to fill this demand by placing a small newspaper ad:
“PREGNANT? Young couple wishes to adopt baby. Call Mary, 289–2229.”
Aptly naming his adoption business The Golden Cradle, Elgart began procuring children for those who paid his fees. He put up huge billboards, and ads on bus stop benches and fast food tray liners all around the Philadelphia area: Pregnant? Call 888–8888.
“Marketing came naturally to Arty Elgart,” writes Laura Mansnerus in 1998, reporting for the New York Times. He “started a facilitation service…. [w]orking out of his auto parts warehouse…. By most accounts, including his own, no one had seen anything quite like it before.” (2)
Shapiro describes adoptees, and their original mothers as “finding community and expressing feelings of anger and pain for the first time; birth mothers describe pressure, regret, and lifelong mourning for the children they gave up, while adoptees talk about their sense of estrangement and about not knowing their medical history.”
Elgart’s practices, which have since become accepted, if not commonplace, were called unconventional and disrespectful in the 1980s. CBS’ “60 Minutes” called Elgart “Mr. Stork” and his adoption practices “unorthodox.” (3)
Having no education or background in social work or adoptions, Elgart eventually was forced to hire a social worker and move his business to Cherry Hill, N.J. (4)
Maxine Chalker, social worker and executive director of Adoptions from the Heart, in Wynnewood, Pa. complained “It gets harder every year because of the competition…. Now everybody thinks adoption is easy money, especially the attorneys…. Now they’re hiring counselors to work in their offices.”(5)
As opposed to the lay public historical view of adoption as a way to find homes for “unwanted” abused or neglected children, with heart-tugging visions of children languishing in orphanages . . . The fact is, however, that nearly 90% of children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans but have at least one parent who placed their child in care temporarily to provide education, or medical care and had no intention of letting them be adopted. Despite this, many have been placed internationally (IA) to fill a huge, and very profitable demand. Transnational adoption has long been plagued with scandals, corruption, and child trafficking, as documented by many scholars, which has caused many nations such as Russia, Guatemala and Ethiopia to end their IA adoption programs.
Domestically, since the acceptance of single parenting, and access to birth control, and pregnancy termination, the abundance of babies being placed for adoption during the post WWII Baby Scoop Era has been drastically reduced, turning supply and demand on its head, and creating do-it-yourself advertising for babies also known as child trafficking for adoption and “predatory” adoption.
My 2007 book, The Stork Market: America’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry notes that the Child Welfare League of America defines independent as “adoption that takes place without involvement of legally regulated agencies, often involving physicians, lawyers, or others who, for a fee, identify and/or place a child with adoptive parents” (p 14).
Some private adoption arrangements are made directly, many over the Internet, and others are arranged by facilitators, members of the clergy, or baby brokers. Independent adoptions are arranged for both U.S. and foreign-born children. Doctors still “counsel” women to relinquish their newborns, often in conjunction with cradle-chasing attorneys. They deliver babies and sell or give them to couples — without home studies or any other requirements — who are then named as the parents on the birth certificate. These children grow into adults with no way to trace their roots or find their medical history, even by court order.
In 1993 there were an estimated six million prospective adopters vying to be one of sixty thousand that will be successful. Competition to be successful, the one in a hundred is fierce, and the first step many take is paying someone to locate a pregnant woman, who might yield a baby to adopt. Their desperation has led to what some call a “cottage industry.”
Ruth-Arlene Howe of Boston College Law School found that “…the supply of Caucasian infants has not been able to meet the demand. This has created a business opportunity for those who can ‘supply’ babies. The desire for healthy infants has led many adults, frustrated by long agency waiting lists, to use private ‘businesses’ to obtain infants here and abroad.”
L. Anne Babb, adoptive mother and author of Ethics in American Adoption, states: “…anyone with enough money to advertise him — or herself as an independent adoption facilitator can claim expertise and get into the business of moving children from family to family.”(6)
“Anyone can call themselves a facilitator,” according to Susan Romer, a San Francisco adoption attorney. “Many of them work out of their homes with an 800 number…. People who are looking to adopt are willing to pay the cost and take the chances.”
It wasn’t a huge leap from paying broker middle-man, to cutting out his fee and doing it oneself via advertisements on Craigslist, and social media.
Shapiro describes adoptees, and their original mothers as “finding community and expressing feelings of anger and pain for the first time; birth mothers describe pressure, regret, and lifelong mourning for the children they gave up, while adoptees talk about their sense of estrangement and about not knowing their medical history.”
This is not at all a new phenomenon, as she seems to imply. It is not happening “for the first time.” Orphan Voyage began with the 1968 book by Jean Paton and morphed into local support groups through the south. ALMA (Adoptees Liberation Movement) was founded on the East Coast by Florence Fisher in 1974. Both joined adopted people in expressing the legal, emotional, and medical challenges of being adopted. Concerned United Birthparents (CUB) was founded in 1976 by Lee Campbell to help mothers and fathers deal with the shame, and grief of losing children to adoption. All three of these organizations encouraged, and assisted reunification of families separated by adoption.
Furthermore, adoptive parents have formed groups such as APFOR (Adoptive Prents for Open Records) founded by Carol Gustavson of NJ in the 1970s, and who marched with adoptees and thei mothers in 1989 in Washington DC. Later PEAR (People for Ethical Adoption Reform) was formed and was originally known as Adoptive Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform and likewise worked side-by side with adoptees and their mothers.
Adoptive and birth mothers and fathers, as well grandparents such as Pffeifer and other kin, all share a common goal. They are pro-family preservation and reunification. Jointly they seek to prevent unneccesary family separations and to find alternative care solutions for children in need that is in their best interest, not the demand and profit-driven industry adoption is.
THE VICTIM?
Shapiro writes about an unidentified New York City couple: (kind) “Justin” and “Erin” (with blond, beachy waves and a Michigan accent) who is pushing 40, and in “premature” menopause (cue the violins for the first sympathy grabber for Erin as the victim of the story, and safely protected by a pseudonym).
They decide to adopt, and with the advice of an attorney, they choose a platform called Adoptimist (“a technology company devoted to family-building. We are not an adoption agency or law firm”) and placed their want ad for a baby to adopt — as one might place a “wanting to Buy” ad on Craigslist for a car, or a sofa. But in this case, would-be adopters describe themselves in glowing terms in order to sell themselvesto expectant moms who might be considering adoption, in the hopes of being the lucky recipient of the mother’s loss.
Erin and Justin are typical of thousands of the longing-to-be-mothers, and couples who post resumes describing themselves in photo essays that are geared to win over a naïve mother, whose crisis they plan to exploit to fulfill their desire. Like many, they were scammed (hand wringing for the second reason to view Erin as victim). The stage is now set for readers to identify with, and have nothing but compassion, and sympathy, or empathy for this couple, and their plight. They then join a support group which advises them to use Facebook’s advertising analytics to hone their search by aiming it at a specific demographic: women “in college towns.” Not unlike what Artie Elgart, and other notorious gray and black market baby brokers had done decades before. Facebook has simply become the billboard de jour.
Shapiro continues with the theme of Erin as victim, of vicious online attacks, by those who dare to point out the predatory nature of advertising for a baby. Erin the victim — even when she goes on the attack because she is not “the type to back down” and says she “was not going to shut up and ignore it and walk away. I’m Italian, I’m hot-blooded. If I see something that’s wrong for me or someone else, I am not going to be silent.” So, it’s OK for her to fight against perceived wrongs, but not for adoptees and mothers to do so?
ADOPTEES
Only two adopted persons are mentioned, and quoted in the article. One goes by the name Julie Gray, who is so radical she “has been removed and blocked from many groups because of her use of harsh language” to both natural, and adoptive parents.
The other person named is Geri Pfeiffer a grandmother in declining health with liver disease as well as advanced heart failure. Knowing this, Shapiro described her as living “in a trailer heated by a wood-burning stove in central Oklahoma, near the end of a narrow dead-end road. Pfeiffer, who is 61 and stands 6'2”, has a big laugh and wears clear Coke-bottle-thick bifocals.” Hardly the “blonde-haired” and “kind” description of Erin and Jason. Instead, Pfeiffer is dedicated to the reunification of families torn apart by unjust CPS removals. Pfeiffer, however, as well as other activists, are vilified as stalkers.
Shapiro paints a picture of those who are justifiably critical of adoption coercion as crazed, obsessed disgruntled, regretful, angry, and on the fringe rather than righteously concerned, about harm being done to families and their children by unregulated child redistribution. “The people who engage in those behaviors,” she writes, “make up a small minority, but a vocal one” without recognizing the comparison to whistleblowers, and activists in many areas, who expose injustices and corruption.
Shapiro chose to focus on perhaps the most extreme actvists rather than interview award winning adoptee authors such as Jane Jeong Trenka, president of TRACK (Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea), or Lorraine Dusky, or many others including myself, despite recognizing that:
“Many anti-adoption advocates, as well as some experts in child-welfare reform, argue that helping families get what they need — rehab, food stamps, child care subsidies — should be prioritized over permanently removing children from their parents.”
Still, Shapiro paints a picture of those who are justifiably critical of adoption coercion as crazed, obsessed disgruntled, regretful, angry, and on the fringe rather than righteously concerned, about harm being done to families and their children by unregulated child redistribution. “The people who engage in those behaviors,” she writes, “make up a small minority, but a vocal one” without recognizing the comparison to whistleblowers, and activists in many areas, who expose injustices and corruption.
Shapiro seems totally unaware of the growing increase over the past decades in adult adoptees reclaiming their voices after decades of being the perpetual “child” — the object in the background of adaptive narrative told delightedly, by joy filled adopters who obtained their much sought-after prize. Having at long last caught the golden ring on their merry-go-round ride, they express feeling blessed, happy and content. They got what they wanted and paid for: motherhood! For them adoption is happily-ever-after.
It is the self-empowerment of adopted people. It began when massive numbers of adoptees, in particular those adopted from Korea, reached adulthood and began taking back their power, and ownership of their lives, their stories, and their experience from a first-hand perspective. Some are thankful to have been adopted, but their accounts are not filled with rainbows and unicorns as are those told by their satisfied recipients.
As opposed to the glorified picture of adoption, as a win-win, and happily-ever-after to be encouraged with tax incentives (originally designed to encourage special needs adoption and now being used for IA and newborn adoption, which are of no social value nor do they reduce taxpayer child care burdens ) and romanticized stories, far too many adoptees have experienced physical, psychological, and or sexual abuse in their adoptive homes, while others articulate the trauma of losing one’s family, and being expected to be grateful. Contrary to Shapiro’s odd reference to “former adoptees or birth parents” once an adoptee, always an adoptee and the same is true for mothers who lose children to adoption. Not only are they forever adopted — legally the “possession” of their adopters with falsified birth certificates to prove it — but in many states they are forever denied access to their own authentic birth certificates, something that would make non-adopted people very angry. They are denied their medical history and denied looking into the eyes of a single blood relative. Many discover that they were sold on the gray or black market. All of the secrets, lies, the denial of truth, the stolen identity, the lack of any choice seems cause for justifiable indignation.
Some recognize the value of adoption in certain circumstances and have specific goals, like improving federal oversight, eliminating practices that are coercive to birth mothers, or giving them more time to reverse a decision to give up a child. Others see adoption as wrong in all cases, as an assault on some transcendent natural bond only possible between a biological mother and child.
A PLOT TWIST
Despite Shapiros depiction of “anti-adoptionists” as wild women, using social media to harass, curse at and defame adoptive parents, they are in fact front-line grassroots warriors, trying to put an end to the commercialized redistribution of babies by those willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in an unregulated marketplace — something no government agency seems to have any interest in controlling. The only time the law seems to get involved is when an adoptive parent is scammed — pays money and doesn’t get a baby! That’s like only arresting drug dealers who are ripping off customers by selling milk sugar.
If you read long enough into the piece, Shapiro recognizes that:
“Many anti-adoption advocates, as well as some experts in child-welfare reform, argue that helping families get what they need — rehab, food stamps, child care subsidies — should be prioritized over permanently removing children from their parents.”
One sentence to describe the essence adoption activism: the preservation of families. The basic right of mother and father to receive what they need to remain safely intact, and for alternative non-related stranger adoption to be a last resort, when all attempts at finding willing and able extended family has been tried and failed. For care of children to not be up for sale or have any price tag on it. And for children who need alternative care to not have their name, and roots severed, and made to fit an expected mold their genetic disposition may find difficult.
The article takes a turn if you keep reading. Erin, the victim and of the evil “anti-adoptionists” who called her out for commodifying a child through DIY ads, goes on to adopt again and winds up in a contested battle, but as of Shapiro’s writing, she is pursuing the adoption, despite the birth mother wanting her child — echoes of a case I reported in 2015 in which the prospective adopter proceeded knowing the baby’s mother had decided to maintain custody.
Adoptive parents, not part of any anti-adoption movement or culture, such one who identifies herself only by her blog name, Loving Families, reacted not with anger, or vitriol but said she was “saddened and just dumbfounded how any adoptive parent could do this ~ how could they want this to be the basis of forming a family?!” One doesn’t need to be a radical anti-anything activist to see right from wrong.
“I am in contact with other adoptive parents almost daily and without exception we all were just sickened by this case. As parents concerned about the welfare of adoptive children . . . we’re deeply disturbed . . .”
Erin now says: “The anti-adoption folks? Honestly, I get it now. I get why they say some of the things they say. A lot of their concerns are legitimate. There’s a dark side to adoption” and she now also recognizes that: “In a vacuum of oversight, the anti-adoption groups seemed to be the only ones tracking, however imperfectly, the adoption industry.”
Erin wonders what adoption activists would say of her case. I can state unequivocally, that they would be even more distressed about this, than her first because it is far more clearly predatory. She will be beseeched to drop her claim on this child who is wanted by his mother, and her aunt. Adoption is intended to care for “unwanted” children not create King Solomon battles over motherhood. No child should suffer the lifelong trauma of feeling unwanted, unless it is the only way to protect them from violence or severe neglect.
In a vacuum of oversight, the anti-adoption groups seemed to be the only ones tracking, however imperfectly, the adoption industry.
Shapiro misses the boat in describing adoption activists and those she calls — and may call themselves — anti-adoption:
Some recognize the value of adoption in certain circumstances and have specific goals, like improving federal oversight, eliminating practices that are coercive to birth mothers, or giving them more time to reverse a decision to give up a child. Others see adoption as wrong in all cases, as an assault on some transcendent natural bond only possible between a biological mother and child.
This is untrue and insulting. No one is claiming anything supernatural, mystical or otherworldly about the mother/child experience. It is not about a unique bond; it is about avoiding — whenever possible — the lifelong trauma of unnecessary separation which is scientifically documented. It is well known that newborn infants recognize the sight, sound and scent of the mother in whose womb they have grown and experience a primal wound when separated.
THE TRUMA OF ADOPTION
Is Adoption Trauma? Is a Facebook community of approximately 12,000 who recognize that separating mother and child is traumatic for both. Regardless of the age of the child. Mother and child have varying lifelong effects including neurological changes to infants.
Perry’s early findings (7) report the trauma of early separation of mother and child “determines the organizational and functioning status of the mature brain” and how emotional “dissociation become[s] a [permanent] maladaptive trait.” This alters the “the limbic area responsible for attachment and affects regulation, and aspects of emotion” (p. 274). Perry (1995) supports the later findings of Hofer (2006), Schore (2001) (8), and Sunderland (2015). Children who lack early attachment opportunities have similar brains and lower IQs (Perry, 2002). The younger the child is when they experience this lack of attachment, the greater the damage. This kind of damage leads to a lack of essential social skills.
Marshall Schechter, a psychiatrist in private practice in Beverly Hills, California, reported in 1960 (9)that adoptees were 100 times more likely than non-adoptees to present a range of serious emotional problems. Since adoptees numbered less than one-tenth of one percent in the general population, adopted children were greatly over-represented in his practice. Schechter’s colleague, Povl Toussieng, a child psychiatrist at the famous Menninger Clinic, also reported up to one-third of all children seen as outpatients at the clinic were adopted. Adopted children, they found, could not cope with the knowledge that they had been rejected by birth parents, and no amount of reassurance that their adoptive parents loved, and wanted them could make up for the “severe narcissistic injury” that adoption inflicted.
Schechter was not the first person to suggest that adoption posed intrinsic psychological risks. As early as 1937, psychiatrist David Levy presented case histories showing that adoptees suffered from “primary affect hunger,” a term he used to describe what is now called attachment disorder. A number of other clinicians in the U.S. and Britain published reports in the 1940s and 1950s about the deleterious consequences of growing up “without genealogy.” Not without controversy, and an eagerness to blame “bad blood,” Schechter concluded that adopted children were much more likely to become neurotic and psychotic.
Schechter’s account of the damage that adoption did to children was vigorously contested during the 1960s. Today, it is widely accepted by parents and professionals who agree that attachment and loss are at the heart of what makes adoption a distinctive and difficult experience. This consensus was efficiently summarized in a book that Schechter co-edited with developmental psychologist David Brodzinsky: The Psychology of Adoption (1990).
We cannot overlook the fact that adoptees attempt suicide four times as often as non-adopted persons as reason to stop exalting and encouraging adoption, but to maintain it as a last resort.
Adoption advocates are also concerned about, and opposed to the commercial supply and demand aspect of adoption, where money talks and is the primary basis for who gets to be a parent — rather than what it is the child’s best interest. It is the assumption that the child is better of with those who can provide more and better material possessions, private schools and dance lessons while devaluing a parent’s right to her child and — more importantly — the child’s right to continuity, to know his kin, and avoidance of the trauma of separation.
There is also substantial scholarly data documenting the universally lifelong and irresolvable grief and shame suffered by mothers who lose children to adoption.
Shapiro quotes pro-adoption Elizabeth Berthelot as saying that “protecting the welfare of children has to take priority over parental rights.” Adoption activists believe that the best way to protect children’s rights is to honor them as being part of the family into which they are born, even if they need alternative care. It is not in any child’s best interest to be stripped of his identity, and issued a falsified birth certificate listing unrelated persons as parents of birth. It is not in any person’s best interest to be denied access to family medical history. Nor is it in the best interest of a child to be commodified.
Yes, if a child is in danger. But what adoption activists — those who have lived adoption — advocate for is preventing unnecessary traumatizing family separations, by assisting families in crisis, with whatever they need, be it parenting classes, substance abuse treatment, or child care and if that is unwanted, or unsuccessful the child has a right to be placed with extended family first, and as a last resort with an unrelated stranger. And even then, it is not in any child’s best interest to erase his or her genealogy, and thus care should be provided through permanent legal guardianship.
ACTIVISM
Anti-adoption, pro-family preservation activists are no more evil than anti-war activists, The Black Lives Matter movement, advocates for the disabled, environmental activists, or those advocating for LGBTQ rights. There are arguments pro and con, and no one should resort to online bullying, but all such grassroots activists come from a place a deep passion, often very personal in nature, and are trying to stop, or at least curtail unnecessary trauma.
Whenever a marginalized group speaks truth to power, their efforts must be heard and applauded. Civil Rights were obtained by those who dared to expose the rich, and powerful hidden under sheets. Mainstream society does not weep for Klansman as victims of being called out for wrongdoing; for their inhumane treatment of POC. Likewise, it is justified to call out those who treat children as commodities by advertising online in order to obtain a healthy white human prize in a manner reminiscent of human slave trade.
It is also always important in assessing controversial issues, to follow the money. Who stands to gain? Whose livelihood depends on maintaining the status quo with as little oversight as possible? And who foots the bill and pays the price — often in cash, with no questions asked, as clearly depicted in the documentary Wo Ai Ni Mommy (I Love You Mommy) — to get what they feel entitled to?
We need to stop dismissing, demeaning or sensationalizing the rightful, passion-based outrage of adoptees, mother and grandparents. We need instead to listen and respect and learn from them. Adoption activists have nothing to gain except a desire to put an end to the perpetuation and encouragement of a failed social experiment, that has become an unregulated demand-driven mega-billion dollar industry, with little to no concern about the best interest of anyone but the paying customer.
I am left unsure what overall point Shapiro tried to make by sensationalizing the online “wars” with vitriolic quotes, but for me the conclusion is clear: We need to stop dismissing, demeaning or sensationalizing the rightful, passion-based outrage and listen and respect and learn from adoption activists who have nothing to gain except a desire to put an end to the perpetuation and encouragement of a failed social experiment, that has become an unregulated demand-driven mega-billion dollar industry, with little to no concern about the best interest of anyone but the paying customer.
NOTES
[1] The Stork Market: America’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry (2007) Mirah Riben, p 62. Available as free download here: https://archive.org/details/the-stork-market/mode/2up
[2] Ibid, p 63
[3] ibid
[4] Ibid, p 63
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid, P 71
[7] Perry, B., Pollard, R., Blaikley, T., Baker, W., Vigilante, D. Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation, and “Use-dependent” Development of the Brain: How states become traits”. Infant Mental Health Journal, 16 (4), Winter 1995.
[8] Schore, A. N. (2001a). The effects of early relational trauma on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Journal of Infant Mental Health 22, (1–2), (pp. 201–269).
Schore, A. N. (2001b). The effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Journal of Infant Mental Health, 22 (1–2), (pp.7–66).
[9] Marshall D. Schechter, “Observations on Adopted Children,” 1960
