I know that question grates on so many ears of people that are struggling with infertility. The people that say that mean well. However, they not only accomplish making a person feel worse about their inability to carry a baby to term but they unwittingly feed into the misconception that adoption is simple. Adoption is not simple, as adoption agencies and lawyers might want to lead you to believe.
Unfortunately, to a large percentage of them, a hopeful adoptive parent (or set of parents) is just a paycheck. They are not truly invested in supporting a pregnant woman to make the best decision she can about her baby. Instead they are invested in forwarding whatever myths about pregnant women considering adoption that will get them more babies to sell to couples that will pay for the “service.” Yes, I said “sell.” Human trafficking is alive and well under the guise of domestic infant adoption and under legalities. Not all agencies and/or lawyers engage in behavior that is so concentrated on the business side of adoption that they forget that humans are directly involved. But there are still way too many agencies/lawyers that are engaging in trafficking in every way but in name. Domestic infant adoption is a shrinking “business.” There are far more hopeful adoptive parents out there than there are parents that are even considering adoption. I’d venture a guess that it’s about 10 to 1, and that’s most likely a conservative estimate. Due to the shrinking availability of pregnant women, who are now more empowered to raise their babies, agencies are desperate to spread lies about pregnant women that might convince those same women to relinquish.
Then there are the adoptive parents and hopeful adoptive parents that are spreading lies about “birth parents.” I see almost daily a post on one Facebook group or another from a hopeful adoptive parent talking about how they hope the “birth mom” with whom they’ve been matched is not “scamming them” and will really give up her baby. I realize that there have been women who aren’t even considering adoption at all or they’ve not been pregnant in the first place and lie to get the resources they feel they need. However, I still believe that those women are not the norm. It’s like assuming all birth moms are crazy and going to try to take their kids back because of a few sensationalized stories, or that all birth moms relinquish their kids and never think about them again.
The real problem that I have is the assumption that once a mom chooses them as possible parents for her child that she can no longer change her mind. I’ve talked before about the fact that it’s okay to have some hope – in fact it’s necessary. But there’s a difference between hoping for the outcome you want and believing that the baby she carries is your child already. That baby is not your child, even if his or her mother seems firm in her decision to choose adoption. Adoption is not about you, the hopeful adoptive parent. Adoption is what’s best for the child from the point of view of his or her mother. That means it is her decision and her decision alone to make. It’s not yours and it shouldn’t be. It’s most definitely not the choice of an adoption agency or attorney.
I also have a problem with the assumption that since there aren’t as many women placing their children with adoptive parents as in the past, that means the ones who actually contact you are just trying to make a quick buck and have no intentions to place the baby they “supposedly” carry. This is one of the many reasons why I think that there should be absolutely no exchange of money or goods between a hopeful adoptive parent and a woman considering adoption. I’ll say it again. There should be absolutely no “gifts” given to the expectant mom from the hopeful adoptive parents. I actually think it should be illegal for a hopeful adoptive parent to give a gift to a woman considering adoption. That would take any possibility of that expectant mom feeling coerced by the hopeful adoptive parents out of the picture. It would also inhibit the thinking that due to a few people who have abused the adoption “system” that all expectant moms considering adoption are out to get resources.
I realize with the prevalence of the internet and social media that it’s easy to spread horrible rumors about anyone under any circumstances whether it’s adoption-related or not. It’s also easy with blogs and other “true confessional” sites to access stories that are not positive and assume that whatever the story is about happens all the time. It’s easy to find a blog post about a “birth mother” that scammed a well-meaning couple out of a lot of money or resources, or hear the negative feelings a hopeful adoptive couple endures when an expectant parent that chose them either chooses to parent or chooses someone else to parent her child. That can easily be translated by people frustrated with their own inability to have children into the “fact” that all expectant parents are evil beings.
I don’t have a solution. I do think, as I said before, that hopeful adoptive parents who have been selected by an expectant parent considering adoption shouldn’t give gifts or resources to that parent. This is why I believe that agencies who do provide expectant moms with resources of some sort (food cards, etc) should pull from a pool of money that is taken from the fees that hopeful adoptive parents pay so that it’s not directly from one “client.” I also think that if a hopeful adoptive parent and an expectant parent considering adoption meet outside of an agency, say through the internet and/or mutual friends, that the same rules should be followed. I think this, if nothing else, would take some of the fear and consequent rumor-spreading out of the equation. Also, people should stop spreading rumors. In other words, if someone has proof that a certain person is pretending to be an expectant parent considering adoption but really isn’t, then certainly use social media to spread the news around. This is a good thing and a good use of social media. But if another person doesn’t have proof and only suspicions, it would be best if that person keeps those suspicions to his or herself until they have proof of those misdeeds. I know it seems a small thing, but I’ve seen reputations of innocent people destroyed over a simple miscommunication that spread out of control before it got solved.