The adoption reform movement (and Teen Mom)

LONG PREFATORY NOTE:

This post is about what I've gathered from a short, casual, online inquiry into the adoption reform movement. I'm pro-adoption, but what I've read has complicated my thinking.

As a social scientist, I'm used to looking at social processes as distinct from the individuals involved. Most people (especially Americans) tend to think in terms of individuals; so when they hear or read a discussion of a social problem, they tend to assume that the author/speaker is criticizing a particular person or group. In reality, though, individual people aren't the problem; the overall pattern is the problem.

For example, take credential inflation: the fact that a bachelor's degree no longer confers elite status, and so more and more people are seeking masters degrees even though the jobs they go on to get don't really require that kind of expert training. They get the degrees to get past the real or imagined screens that hiring offices put up to shrink the number of applications. A recent NYTimes article explains the problem.

An individualist perspective asks, whose fault this is? Employers for shirking their responsibility to train on the job? Universities for selling revenue-generating masters degree programs that don't address real workforce needs? Students for lacking the resourcefulness to build a career after a bachelor's degree? As a social scientist, I see the overall pattern as the problem, not the perfectly logical decisions of the individual people involved.

When I look at problems associated with adoption as it is currently practiced, I focus on the processes (as shaped by culture and institutions) and not the individuals involved. People have to navigate the social landscape as it is, not as it would be in an ideal world.

NOW ONTO ADOPTION ...

As someone who considers expanding her family through adoption (and has for a long time), I've often been curious about critics. My curiosity was piqued by the criticism that some people (or maybe just one) were levying against Rain on her blog.

I followed one of Rain's critics to her own blog (which didn't have much material yet) and went through her blogroll to find voices that sought to explain the critiques of adoption practice to those not already on board. I found one that sheds a lot of light: the Declassified Adoptee, especially under the "About" tab.

I'll highlight two of her many points.

1. The "Angry Adoptee" stereotype:

She writes:

Unfortunately, the "Angry Adoptee" stereotype follows adoptees who do not sing the praises of adoption. We want our roots, our rights, and acknowledgement of being a part of our Original Families and because of it, we are seen as the products of failed adoptions. To the outside word, Adult Adoptees like me are viewed as either people whose Adoptive Parents failed or who are too self-absorbed to acknowledge the stereotypes and just "move on."

Her discussion of how critical adoptees are silenced reminds me of how people also can't deal with stories of intractable infertility. In our culture, we want unalloyed happy endings, and adoptees who see problems with the process and infertile couples who don't conceive and carry to term on their first IVF both tend to make people profoundly threatened. It's not fair to either group.

2. Criticism of pre-birth matching:

One practice that adoption reform advocates like the Declassified Adoptee single out is pre-birth matching. She writes:

I believe that practices such as promised but unenforceable openness, "dear birthmother" letters, and pre-birth matching are manipulative. Such things are hailed as providing expectant mothers with comfort in the family that they are choosing to adopt their child. When in reality, these methods may influence a mother's decision and make her feel that she is obligated to surrender or "selfish" if she doesn't give her baby to a "better off" or more "prepared" individual. Considering one's own ability to raise a child may be a time in an expectant mother's life when she is trying to be as honest as herself as possible, all the while looking at profiles of couples who are themselves putting their best faces forward. I am not sure how an impoverished, single mother can look at profile after profile of couples with four bedroom homes, kid-friendly country clubs, and pictures of them smiling next to the Eiffel Tower from their last vacation (not to mention intro paragraphs telling her how selfless and wonderful she is for considering adoption for her child) and not feel influenced to surrender her baby. An expectant mother should make her decision uninfluenced.

I encountered a couple vivid examples of this critique. I recently watched a few episodes of Teen Mom (which I had never seen). The show focuses on four young women, one of whom had made an adoption plan, together with her sweet boyfriend (who was the baby's father). I thought it an enlightened choice to include Catelynn & Tyler as "parents," recognizing that their journey didn't end when the baby went home to her adoptive parents.

They struggled. In one episode, they were frustrated that they didn't know the baby's full legal name. They met with their adoption counselor, who bluntly told them they didn't have the right to know that. They realized that the openness they had carefully chosen was completely at the discretion of the adoptive parents. They had no rights at all.

Curious about where things stand with them now, I went to the show's website and ended up watching the recently aired Teen Mom Adoption Special with Dr. Drew (who I'd never seen in action before).

It was absolutely unconscionable! One of the guests was Ashley (who had apparently been on one of the 16 and Pregnant seasons; never seen it), who placed her baby for adoption with her aunt and uncle and has regretted it tremendously ever since. Dr. Drew kept bullying her, trying to get her to say that the adoption the only appropriate choice, that parenting would have been selfish, and that her own overwhelming feelings of loss and regret were illegitimate and unfair to the adoptive family. Here's a blog post that largely paralleled my perceptions of the show, although I don't agree with their characterization of Catelynn and Tyler as dupes.

If the goal of adoption is to meet the needs of the whole adoption triad, than clearly the process involving Ashley has failed big-time. And pre-birth matching and the cultural norms that go with it seem to have contributed to this unfortunate outcome.

As an aside, another devastating loss happens when birth mothers decide to parent after a pre-birth match has already formed. Obviously, it's a birth-mother's right to change her mind, but the awful experience for would-be parents wouldn't occur if pre-birth matching just wasn't done. And it's a loss that affected couples often suffer in silence, because our culture doesn't encourage others to recognize it as a real loss.

Obviously, there are benefits of pre-birth matching for adoption process that succeed. What kind of process would produce better outcomes? And how can adults involved in these processes act with integrity while the processes are flawed?

CHILDREN AS PROPERTY?

Family sociology isn't my area of expertise, but one point I've read has stuck with me. Some argue that child-custody laws tend to treat children as property, because they only ask which adults have a "right" to custody and visitation with that child. How different would it be if we instead started with the premise that children have a right to all adults who are important and positive in their life? Laws would definitely view grandparents, ex-stepparents, and birth parents in a very different light. And it would probably make donor-gamete processes more complex as well.

I'M NO EXPERT

One concept from feminist sociology is "standpoint;" it's the idea that where one stands in society (gender, social class, race, geography, etc) gives one a unique, valuable perspective on social issues. Traditional social science tends to treat social issues as technical problems best left to experts who claim to stand above the fray. Standpoint advocates say we're all "experts" of our own experience and have insights to contribute to understanding complex issues.

In that spirit, I'm interested to see what people think about the complex issues raised by adoption. It's hugely different than it was 30 years ago, and as a society, we're still feeling our way to new norms and understandings. I think respecting the especially rich insights of people directly affected by adoption (and especially adult adoptees) doesn't mean that the rest of us have to just sit down and shut up. We're all capable of clear moral and pragmatic reasoning in a spirit of respectful dialogue.

With that, your thoughts?