A Gift of Hope Adoptions

The concept of open adoption is simultaneously understood and vastly misconstrued. Openness in adoption refers to the level of contact between the birth family and the adoptive family. In the US historically adoptions were closed; there was no contact between either party. The birth mother gave birth and the child was whisked away never to be seen or heard from again, and from the adoptive parents point of view a baby magically appeared in a bassinette and a smiling nurse or social worker handed him/her over at the appointed time. This has (thankfully) fallen out of favor in the adoption community, although the stereotype still persists. Now birth parents usually participate in the selection of the adoptive family and maintain some sort of contact during the child’s life, whether via updates such as photos and letters, through social media, phone contact, or in person visits.

The level of openness depends on the type and frequency of contact between the birth and adoptive families. The confusion comes when someone tries to call one type of adoption an “open adoption.” Openness is really more of a range or a scale than a defined type of adoption. The more contact you have the more open it is, rather than x y and z = an open adoption. So if you hear someone say “I want an open adoption” that usually means “I want some form of contact in my adoption relationship.” So the real question is, “What type of contact and frequency of contact do you want?” At A Gift of Hope Adoptions rather than asking whether a particular client wants an open, semi-open or closed adoption we ask what type of contact do you want before, during and after the placement. The reality is most adoptions are classified as semi-open (or semi-closed, depending on your personal philosophy). It is also important to note that the level of openness changes during the lives of those involved; contact is more fluid than set in stone. Being flexible and attentive to where the other party is in their own personal process is essential to an effective relationship.

Another misconception comes with advocates of either side. As I said, most adoptions fall in the semi-open range, and this is usually the best case scenario for everyone, particularly the child. Many parents forget that the point of adoption is for the best interest of the child. If the point of adoption is to find a family for a child who needs one, then it is vitally important that we provide that child as complete a history as we can. Everyone is curious to know where they come from, and as parents we are obliged to aid our children in identity formation, whether that is comfortable for us or not. Completely closed adoption cut off a child from his or her history, and while completely open adoptions may or not be in the child's best interest depending on the circumstances (ie if the birth parents are out of the picture for abuse/neglect reasons) that child still deserves to know why adoption was the best option, as is maturity appropriate of course.

Join us for an adoption reunion picnic! We'll see many of our happily placed families, have some food, and give out great gifts and prizes to attendees! Come one come all, whether you're a current waiting family, a happily placed family, or considering using our services! For those of you in contact with your birth family this would make an excellent location for a reunion with them also! Birth parents, you of course are welcome as well, whether you are meeting up with your adoptive family, wanting more information about our services, or just want to see if all the hype is true. The location is at a local park so there will be plenty of space and playground equipment for the kids to play. Feel free to RSVP to info@agiftofhopeadoptions.com or on the Facebook event page!

When: September 29, 2012

Time: 11am – 4pm

Where: Burford Shelter, Cosmo Park

1615 Business Loop 70 West

Columbia, MO 65202

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Of all the terms we define Birth Mother might have the most synonyms and be the most controversial. You will see it written in many forms – birth mother, birthmother, first mother, biological mother and natural mother are a few of the most common. Simply put, a birth mother is a woman who has given birth to a child. In the adoption world however, a far greater meaning is placed on a birth mother, as usually a birth mother is a woman who has placed her child for adoption.

Seems simple, but the history of the term is fraught with controversy. The history of adoption and many legal documents use the term "natural mother" to differentiate between a woman who has placed a baby for adoption and a woman who has adopted that child; however, modern adoptive parents object to the term because it makes them the "unnatural parent." Legally, when you adopt a child that child becomes your responsibility as if he/she/they had been born to you, and you raise that child as naturally or unnaturally as any other child, depending on your parenting style. Understandably, no one wants the label "unnatural mother" so the term birth or biological mother has been used for some time. Birth mother seems to be the most common term, even with the rise of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). ART can involve donor eggs, sperm or embryos, which means the birth mother is possibly not the biological mother, but still the legal parent (usually).

So where's the controversy and why do we hear more "first mother" and "expectant parent" labels as preferable to "birth mother"? The term "first mother" is more common among women who feel that they were forced to place their children for adoption and regret that decision later. Often it is used among women of the Baby-Snatch Era (BSE) of the 50's, 60's and 70's where single mothers and women who gave birth out of wedlock were stereotypically frowned upon. These are the stories of a teenager who went to visit an aunt out of state and came back later a different girl, as she had given birth and placed a child for adoption unbeknownst to any of her friends. Usually these girls felt they had no other choice due to pressure by family and society, but later regretted both the circumstances and the secretive nature of everything, particularly if they desired contact with the adoptive family and their child. They prefer "first mother" because they don't see themselves as a voluntary birth mother, feeling instead they would have raised the child themselves given the option and support. Indeed some object to the term birth mother because they feel it softens the picture and obscures the nature of the circumstances surrounding the forced adoption.

While the situations of the BSE and any adoption where the birth mother feels forced or coerced are undeniably regrettable and wrong, most private adoptions (meaning no state involvement due to abuse or neglect) are in fact voluntary now, and most have some degree of openness where the birth mother is allowed to choose the adoptive family and keep in touch in most cases. This is a positive shift in my opinion, and makes adoption a more real option for women in crisis pregnancy situations. However many are claiming that women are not "birth mothers" until they have actually placed a child for adoption – until then they are expectant parents. I see this line of reasoning, as it theoretically takes the pressure off a woman in a situation where she is deciding whether to raise her child or make an adoption plan. However, no one is a birth mother until she actually gives birth anyway, so I think that probably a more accurate term would be "prospective birth mother" or "potential birth mother" – often abbreviated as PBM – for a woman who is actively making an adoption plan for her child while still pregnant. After all, those who raise their biological children are also expectant parents when pregnant, but occasionally a tragedy such as a miscarriage makes them not birth parents. Again, it's merely a question of semantics.

I should note, I tend to separate it as "Birth Mother" rather than birthmother partly for grammar reasons but also out of respect for all mothers. Both a birth mother and an adoptive mother are mothers and should be respected as such, even if their parenting takes on vastly different capacities. We always tell our birth moms that even by considering adoption they are being the best parents they can be, because they are actively considering what will be best for their child. I think no one can argue that putting your child first makes you a good parent, even if that means making the difficult decision to allow someone else to raise your child.

Are you considering adoption as a potential birth parent? Feel free to check out our waiting adoptive families, and get more information about our services or speak to a counselor by filling out our contact form.

Myth: There are Many Unwanted Babies Available for Domestic Adoption

National Infertility Awareness Week is April 24-30. As a majority of the families who become clients of A Gift of Hope Adoptions have some degree of infertility, we are proud to celebrate their arrival as parents through adoption. However, this celebration never comes without a struggle, and proper grieving of the biological child that they will not have. Part of our job as Adoption Counselors is to make sure that they are supported through that grief, and to help them celebrate when the child they have waited for finally arrives.  As part of their events for the week, RESOLVE has asked infertility bloggers to “Bust a Myth” about infertility. While we are not an infertility blog, adoption is often intertwined with infertility, so in honor of all of our clients who have fought that fight, A Gift of Hope Adoptions is happy to bust a myth about domestic adoption.

Yep, we get calls asking about our inventory. Ouch – does that sound harsh or demeaning? It is. It degrades the birth mothers who make the agonizing choice to make an adoption plan for their child. It degrades the adoptive parents who wait and hope and agonize over whether their profile will appeal to a woman in that position. It degrades the professionals who counsel clients in either position, and ultimately work to further the best interest of the child.

And yet for some reason there seems to be this perception that there are just loads of babies lined up in bassinets in an adoption agency back room just waiting for someone to pick out the perfect addition to their family.They magically remain newborns until they are chosen, usually healthy, white, and preferably a girl. Sometimes we get requests for other attributes, or twins, or a potty trained toddler to “fit in” to the existing family structure, or worse, be a playmate for another child the same age.

My colleagues and I have started calling these magical situations “Barcode Babies”

Because people seem to think that we can just build their perfect baby – they put the order in and we build their perfect baby like a new computer. Then we slap a barcode on them and scan them through the system and send them on their way. We will often get deadlines such as “I’d like healthy twin girls by Christmas, with brown eyes like me and blonde hair like my husband.” I’m not sure why this perception exists, although I can understand why infertile families latch on to that. This is what many infertile families dream of during the process of trying to conceive, and it is natural that it would transfer to the next step. Unfortunately, this is not the way it is, and this is part of the process that adoptive families must reconcile before they adopt.

While there are a lot of children waiting to be adopted – a little over 114,000 according to the Dave Thomas Foundation – they are not healthy infants. They are children who have been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect and are waiting through the foster care system. They are in desperate need of loving families, however the process to adopt is difficult and the needs that must be addressed are great. I commend anyone willing to jump through the hoops to adopt these children and am thrilled when A Gift of Hope is part of that process, but I never recommend anyone go about it uninformed – that sets both you and the adoption up for failure. Does this mean there are no infants adopted in the US? Of course not, but the process is more complicated than putting your order in. The data is somewhat vague on this subject as agency and independent adoptions are not reported. According to the Child Welfare Information Gateway in 2001 (most recent data available) about 127,000 children were adopted and 45% of those were private agency, independent, kinship or tribal. The most recent data on people seeking to adopt is from 1995, and only includes data on women. In 1995, there were about 1.6 million women who had taken steps to adopt, and 487,000 who had completed an adoption. Just by my extremely conservative math, that means there are approximately 9 families waiting for every child placed, if you apply the waiting women 1995 data to the 2001 adoption data. This does not take into account type of adoption, and since in general infants are preferred by adoptive families but declining in availability, I would assume there are many more waiting adoptive families per infant placed (I have heard whispered estimates that it is closer to 100 waiting families for every infant, although I'm not sure who did the math on that). Please do not take these calculations as gospel – the data is largely unavailable so these are very much estimates. But the harsh reality is there are fewer and fewer babies available and more and more families waiting for them. It is not impossible, however, and to those who are still dreaming of a baby know that we are hoping with you that it will soon be your turn.

Want a basic understanding of Infertility? Check out RESOLVE's Infertility 101.

Interested in knowing more about National Infertility Awareness week? Here is the background.

Recently a colleague and I were discussing some of the questions we get from women considering adoption plans for their unborn (and occasionally, born) children.  One of the questions that never ceases to amaze us – and that we get frequently – is “So do you think you will have anyone who wants my baby?” It’s usually all I can do to restrain myself from yelling “YES! YES! A Thousand Times YES!!!”  I will attempt to maintain my composure and assure her that we likely have multiple adoptive family profiles that she can review and if she doesn’t like any of those we can get her more to view quickly. While you get the occasional scammer or birth parent that is the adoption equivalent of a gold-digger, this is not the norm. Most are generally seeking to be the best parent they can possibly be for their child, even if that means making the extraordinarily difficult decision to let someone else raise that child as their own. While her pregnancy may not be exactly what she wanted, I can assure the woman in that situation that there is someone, indeed more than one someone, who DESPERATELY wants that pregnancy, and has gone through a lot of heartbreak and jumped through a lot of legal hoops to be approved to parent. I don't want to seem insensitive to those in difficult situations; pregnancy is stressful and will change your life forever, regardless of your situation and whether you planned to be pregnant or not. But whether the pregnancy was wanted by you or not, the pregnancy and the child you are carrying is wanted.  Your child is so loved, and not just by you. We always tell our clients you can never have too many people love a child, and adoption ensures that the adopted child has so many people available to provide love for that little one. Every time I hear the term “unwanted pregnancy” my eye starts to twitch and I grit my teeth because

The truth is someone, somewhere desperately wants that pregnancy, and desperately loves that child.

Don’t buy the myth of the unwanted pregnancy, and for those of us in support positions for these women and their beautiful children, let’s do what we can to change that stereotype. [facebooksimplelike]

A Gift of Hope Adoptions is always trying to keep up with the latest trends and techniques in social media and marketing while still protecting the privacy of our clients. It can be a fine line, as particularly for adoptive parents exposure to potential birth parents is crucial but it must be countered with protection of personal information that could be used for identity theft or adoption scammers. At AGOHA we strive to both protect our clients (birth and adoptive families) as well as make sure they get the maximum possible exposure to make that match. We have a Facebook group which is closed – meaning you have to be approved by the administrator and can be removed for inappropriate comments, behavior, pictures, etc. – and a Facebook page, which anyone can "Like" or follow. The group is more support for current clients and information for prospective clients, as well as a place to brag about your children, while the page is general adoption information and links to current adoption media. AGOHA also has a Twitter account – follow us @GiftofHopeAdopt – and a YouTube Channel as well as a new e-newsletter. Having your agency market you can be helpful for adoptive parents and birth parents as you can have your agency be the contact and filter for you and only present situations that would match your preferences. This works not only for adoptive parents but for birth parents as well – have your agency screen adoptive families for you and only show you the ones that meet your preferences. If you are looking for potential adoptive parents or just more information about adoption feel free to fill out our Birth Parents Contact form and we can email you an application and/or profiles that meet your qualifications, or send them by postal mail also.