This past week someone close to me, a family member, asked me how old I was when I was pregnant with my oldest child. She was referring to the one lost to adoption and when I said I was 19 her response was
"you were old enough to make your own decision"
Last night I was chatting online with a friend of mine and he said -
"even the strongest rocks crack and erode from constant pressure- that's how we got the Grand Canyon"
He was talking about a situation that is totally unrelated to adoption but when I read those words, they resonated with me, not just in the case we were discussing but also in relation to adoption. It was interesting to me that these two conversations happened so close to each other. His comment reminded me immediately of the other one about me being old enough to make the adoption decision and I thought how strange it was that someone who has known me for so many years and who has had numerous conversations with me about adoption, still didn't seem to understand the coercion for what it was. I guess she still thinks I had a choice and freely made the decision to surrender my daughter.
My friend's comment about cracking and erosion was spot on. That is what happens to mothers being groomed to surrender their babies. They crack and erode from the constant pressure. The pressure may be subtle, the techniques slick and fluid as water, but it's still pressure. Sometimes it's blatant but still not recognized by the mother because of her unsupported and vulnerable position. I sometimes still see comments from people on articles about adoption that say to the grieving mother - "well, no one held a gun to your head". Well, that person would be right. No one held a gun to my head. But what the people around me did hold was......
the ability to help me but they didn't.
the information I needed in order to keep my child but they didn't share it.
the knowledge of how adoption affects mothers and their babies but they didn't share that either.
the financial support that would have enabled us to remain together, once again, no sharing.
the emotional support that would have helped sustain us until we could stand on our own but wasn't given.
the emotional manipulation tools that would steer me in their chosen direction and they used them well.
Guns are not the only weapons that can be used against someone. If something as simple as water can carve out a canyon then why is it so hard to believe that a young, vulnerable, pregnant woman can be coerced out her newborn child?
I understand how you felt, the same way I felt when I was pregnant at 15years old. I still wonder why the Children's Aid didn't give me any of that information, they just told me I couldn't keep my baby. End of story, they also told me what to say when I went to court to give him away. I still feel angry towards the system that took my baby away, 44 years later. I have never healed from this trauma, even after having 3 more sons.
ReplyDeleteSusan, I don't believe there is an end to healing. I think it's an ongoing process, something we do in bits and pieces for a lifetime. That trauma affects the raising of the children we had later. It affects all of our other relationships. I still feel the anger too. What we can do at this point is use the anger in a constructive way.
DeleteIt seems that more compassionate questions would be, "Did you feel you were able to make the decision freely? Were other options available to you? Were other's needs or prejudices a factor in your decision?" At what age does a person become fully responsible for their decisions....a very interesting question.
ReplyDeleteI think it doesn't really matter what age you are if you find yourself in a position of having only one option, no information about any other options offered to you, no knowledge of how to get other information and a constant barrage of questions that are engineered to steer you down a particular path.
DeleteWhat I think a lot of people don't realise is that much of the counselling re adoption is aimed at exploiting the natural fears that a mother has for a child. Every new mother has fears about how she is going to cope with becoming a mother but in most cases, there is support. In the case of a women undergoing adoption counselling, her natural fears are turned against her so that she doubts herself.
ReplyDeleteAlso, today there is more of a concentration on exploiting the "unplanned" status of the pregnancy and also by doing it as early in the pregnancy as possible. For example, a woman who has an unplanned pregnancy is constantly told that it is better for her child to be raised by people who have planned for parenthood, without anyone pointing out that with advice and support, the new mother can also plan for parenthood. She also is asked the question "what do you have to offer a child compared with adoptive parents who have been planning for a child" and expected to answer as if her child is a blank slate so of course she always going to come off "second best".
The following is an extract from a document about adoption in NZ in the 1960s:
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Creating this new nuclear family meant separating the child from its original mother, and characterizing her as both unable and unfit to rear it. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of concern for children's welfare did not normally permit a new-bom baby to be 'rescued' by being forcibly removed. The decision to give the child up had to appear to be made by the mother herself.
There was no need for overt pressure on the single woman, although this was certainly used on occasion. It was enough to ask her a question no other kind of expectant mother was asked: was she going to keep her baby or not? She was told to compare what she could offer the child with what a married couple could offer, and to decide, not according to what she wanted, but according to what was best for the child. It took exceptional determination for a young woman, pregnant for the first time, to resist that argument and insist that what was best for the child was the child's mother.
In addition, almost everything that happened to her, from the day she revealed her pregnancy, was based on the assumption that her baby was going to be adopted. The history of the ********(agency) shows how matter-of-fact and business-like the whole process quickly became, and how completely it was accepted as both normal and necessary, so that keeping a child could be described as 'making a tragic mistake'.
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Even though that might have been about the 1960s, in some ways, it doesn't seem to have changed much in the US at all.
No, sadly, things haven't changed much. Only the tactics used have changed. The checklist is how they get a lot of mothers to surrender. They get them to look at the temporary problem and declare it to be insurmountable by not giving her the information that would allow her to overcome the problems. And, unplanned pregnancies happen all the time within marriage meaning that those parents are unprepared. Should those babies also be surrendered because their parents weren't properly prepared? Of course not. It all just comes down to cash.
DeleteThe tactic of coercion is to use the love for our child against us, convince us that we cannot both love and keep them with us. That is how insidious coercion is. I was 19 too; still very dependent on the guidance of the adults in my life, feeling shame and feeling I owed some sort of redemption. For what? Loving someone too young? Creating a life?
ReplyDeleteI understand. I felt the shame and guilt for many, many years...thinking I should have known better (but how?), I was old enough to decide (but with what knowledge?), I should have been strong enough (but with what resources to back me up?). The only thing we were truly guilty of was being human and that is nothing to be ashamed of.
DeleteI surrendered my daughter in 1966 at the age of 19. Six months later, I went to donate blood and was told I could not donate without permission of a parent. And shortly after that, I got married. I could not have a marriage license issued without my parent giving permission. BUT no one ever questioned whether I was competent to make a decision to sign away my rights to my daughter. But I couldn't give blood or get married. Insane!!
ReplyDeleteWow Karen, that is insane! It's in their best interests, not the best interests of the child, so they're not going to do anything that would interfere such as requiring parental permission. It shouldn't surprise me but even now I still find myself astounded at what was done to us.
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