Keep Potential Adopters Out of Labor and Delivery!

If ever there were a truly compelling example of emotional coercion, this is it. I read the most moving account of the emotional conflict, pain and a mother's courage on this site; http://rondidondi.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/my-days-without-poowee/

This story has a happy ending, but too many similar ones don't. In most cases, the potential adopters love-bomb the mother-to-be, calling her a b****mother before the child is even born and then crowd into the labor and delivery room as if they were children on Christmas Eve, crowded around the fireplace and looking up the chimney. These particular PAP's came with an entourage, family and friends that were hugging the wannabe "mommy" and congratulating her as if SHE were the one in labor. SHADES OF "THE HANDMAID'S TALE." This mother needed privacy at one of the most pivotal points in her life. NO mother should feel obligated to allow potential adopters into the presence of her private miracle.

If one is to adopt a child, then I would think that they would want the mother of that child to be truly and fully informed and totally understanding of exactly what the ramifications of surrender are. Unfortunately, agencies and adoption social workers don't really give the full story..one that should be given to the expectant mother by those of us who have been there and done that. Instead, They tell her that she'll get past it and that they will provide "counseling. Often, the PAP's get ansty, push in and buy gifts and do all in their power to make this mother feel emotionally obligated and responsible for their future "joy." A lot of mothers go through with the surrender for this very reason, not wanting to disappoint the PAP's, and then suck up the pain or go to a private support group, online, to pour out their sorrow.

When did our society start putting so little value on the bond between a mother and her child that we make adoption look like the best thing to come down the pike since sliced bread? In my era, it was a wholesale slaughter of the mother/child connection and it begat a generation of mothers in silent pain and children growing up with issues of rejection and confusion. It's the Same Stuff, Different Day, in the present time. The package had a bow on it and that is all that has really changed. Open adoption isn't worth the paper on which it is printed. In most states, it can slam shut just as soon as the insecure adopters can find an excuse and the mother can do nothing about it.

I've made this statement before, but I don't know if PAP's hear it or want to hear it. I feel badly for you if you can't have children of your own. But that doesn't entitle you to the offspring of others. You create a market...a demand, and it is up to agencies and adoption social worker to find the confused and fearful mothers in "crisis" (unexpected) pregnancies to fill that demand. Coercion is alive and well, as was pointed out in the blog that I linked in this essay. Unexpected doesn't mean unwanted and helping that mother keep her child is the best thing anyone could do. "I also feel compassion for those with no legs, but I don't think that means I should give them mine. (this is not original but was first said by a friend of mine)"

So, potential adopters with your baby-lust in full bloom....go to this link and read about that pain. I cried..tears of pain and frustration and, finally, tears of joy. She has her baby back with her where he belongs.