Hey folks, it’s a surprise extra bonus episode! After nearly a year of talking about it, we finally got Matt’s mom and birthmom together to talk about adoption, kids, being a parent and forming a family. Take a listen.
Hey folks, it’s a surprise extra bonus episode! After nearly a year of talking about it, we finally got Matt’s mom and birthmom together to talk about adoption, kids, being a parent and forming a family. Take a listen.
Speaking as an adoptee, wow. My birthmom didn’t live long enough to meet my mom. Or she died rather than do so, it has never quite been clear. Gonna sit down and listen to this Very Special Episode…
Amazing episode, much anticipated and thoroughly enjoyed. Emotional enough at points that it made this dumb college kid all heart-fuzzy. Really, really good guys.
Thanks Cole, I’m glad to hear that someone that isn’t directly involved in the issue also found it worthwhile.
Thanks for sharing Matt, it was such a non issue for us that even though our parents connected over the entire process, we never really connected as close friends, even though our lives were paralleled for the first 18 years. I have also connected with both my biological mother and father now and it has been a very rewarding experience.
Good to hear from you Kup, it struck me after we finished recording who my mother was speaking about. Nice to hear from you and glad you have had a positive experience as well.
“Buckle up for the sex” was a disturbing way to open this particular episode…
My maternal half-brother and I have interesting parallels. Before we met we had both become Amiga programmers and atheists. And my birthmother Fedexed a batch of photographs the day we first spoke, one of which was Scott bending his fingers at the first knuckle and the caption, “Can you do this?” Which I can!
BTW I should mention that I’m one of the founders of Bastard Nation, http://www.bastards.org which is an adoptees-rights organization. We advocate for full, unrestricted access by adult adoptees to ALL records related to our adoptions.
Listening to the way Catholic Charities tried to manage the reunion makes me snarl with fury. When *I’m* an adult, and *you’re* an adult, NOBODY has ANY right intercepting my communications or judging my motives or anything. *RAGE*
I think I come down on the opposite side of the issue of privacy on this one. I had no problem with the process involved with meeting Julia and would have appreciated the same buffer if the situation had been reversed. I think it is fully reasonable to give anonymity to either or both parties in an adoption. The only information I see as being legally necessary would be pertinent medical info.
Well my position is that as an adoptee, I didn’t agree to anything, and am not bound by any contracts with the adoption agency. And as an adult, no third party has any business intervening in my affairs. It’s straight up civil rights.
An OPTIONAL buffer? One where you could ASK the agency to run interference because you’re concerned about privacy? Sure, no problem. That’s your choice. But where both you and your birthmother have long expressed willingness to meet? No, Catholic Charities is WAY out of line interfering at that point.
Possibly my attitude is more hardcore because my search was more hardcore – no Internet, no intermediary assistance, my twelve year long search was done by me, with only obstruction from Catholic Charities (including defying a court order). I only found my birthmother because after years of softening her up, my CC agent accidentally let slip a city name.
I took 12 years to find Karen, and she died 16 years later, and I’ll always be furious about the time that was lost.
Offhand, I think I have as much right to my birthmother’s decision of privacy as an embryo has rights to decide if it gets aborted. I wasn’t part of the conversation because I didn’t exist yet, and I don’t get a say about it now.
I don’t think an adoptee’s curiosity about their origin overrides a birthparent’s right to privacy. If both parties are in favor of meeting, then obviously, I’m down with that.
Maybe I’m wrong, but the tone of the website you linked to seemed to demand full background and identifying information about birthparents based solely on the adoptee’s request, with no consideration given to the birthparent’s wishes, which I just can’t get on board with.
To be sure, it sounds like you had a shitty experience tracking down your birth mother, which I empathize with. I also think I don’t share your hardcore attitude regarding ability to find birthparents because I simply never gave a shit about them. I still cannot understand the need of adoptee’s to seek out their birthparents. I’m not saying anyone is wrong or bad for wanting to, I just never felt the motivation. As I mentioned in the episode, the only reason I did it was because I had the letter from Julia asking me to.
Like I said, everyone has a different story.
An adult adoptee is an American citizen like any other. The motives of a person seeking their birthparents is not subject to analysis – it may be mere “curiosity,” or it may be that they or a child needs a marrow donor in order to stay alive.
If one citizen seeks to contact another citizen, it’s not the government’s business to interfere if neither of them is guilty of criminal intent or wrongdoing. It’s CERTAINLY not Catholic Charities’ business to decided who-may-meet-who.
Unlike an embryo, an adult adoptee is alive and did not agree to any of the conditions set regarding their birth. The privacy of the birthparent has to be balanced against understanding of the role of medical history in contemporary diagnosis. Simply put, it is not right that an adoptee, much less the adoptee’s children, should live at greater risk from inherited disease in order to grant ‘privacy’ to the birthparents for the consequences of the birthparents choices years ago. The adoption agency may have made those guarantees, but as a contract binding people who didn’t even exist yet it is invalid.
And, flip it around – WHY is there this guarantee? NOT to serve birthparents – the agencies patently don’t give a dang about birthparents. The agencies are hiding their OWN dirty secrets and pretending it’s for the welfare of birthparents and adoptees. That’s nonsense. What’s actually happening is that time and again black market practices are responsible for providing children. Why d’you think Guatemala stopped international adoptions? Look into Haiti and Chad where adoption agencies were caught red-handed stealing children.
What ought to be the most transparent and open of processes – in order to protect children – is instead veiled in lies and secrecy in order to protect the agencies. And it’s adoptees and their children who pay the price.
Chad, 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7063324.stm
Haiti, 2009: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-02-03/parents-reclaim-children-in-haiti-adoption-row/319520
These are the TIP of the iceberg. Worldwide practices range from coercing mothers to relinquish, to outright kidnapping of infants, and this includes the USA.
For the protection of the children, adoption practices should be wide open and transparent. Instead the agencies fight tooth and nail against any oversight or inspection, and certainly against adoptee rights. Why? Because when adoptees search, they often uncover this kind of stuff.
Gladney adoptions are a classic example, this agency is notorious. Here’s one link there are many others.
http://352nddistrictcourt.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/2004-%E2%80%93-class-action-lawsuit-regarding-edna-gladney-adoption-files/
The myth of the arrogant, needy adoptee seeking to ‘ruin’ a birthparent’s life is just propaganda. The real story is baby-selling and baby-stealing and the systematic abuse of birthmothers. That’s the story the agencies don’t want told, and that’s why adoptions remain closed.
This is so very true. The opening does sound a little weird in this context.
I had a woman who worked for me back in the 90′s whose adopted son and his wife decided to adopt a Korean baby, When they brought the kid to small town Iowa to see great-grandma, one of the old neighbor ladies implied that they were just “adopting someone else’s problem” -she apparently assumed the kid was born out of wedlock and seemed to think the kid was somehow ‘tainted’ as a result. I was always amazed that someone would have that attitude. Fortunately they were able to put her in her place since the mother had been recently widowed and decided she didn’t have the ability to raise the kid alone.
In a sort of related note, I’ve occasionally wondered how/if parents who use a surrogate mother explain it to the kid, and whether the kid get teased about it if other kids find out. I would assume it might be a bit like learning you were adopted?
I suppose the old lady’s attitude may in part come from the days when it was more common for a married couple in the family to quietly adopt a baby to cover up the fact that their younger cousin/sister/niece got knocked up…
You have a laundry list of horrors that I think pretty much everyone would agree are terrible, but they ignore the issue I was originally talking about. What if the birthparents simply want to put a difficult time in their lives behind them and move on without fear of having someone suddenly show up, for whatever reason, 20 years later? What if the adoptee wants no contact with either birthparent, should they have to fear one of them is gonna show up once they turn 18?
Maybe the system isn’t perfect, and I’ve certainly only seen a good example of it, but I’d much rather there be some process in place that lets either side retain their anonymity if they so desire.
Again, I’m all for collecting pertinent medical data to be made available to an adoptee. I just see no reason that a birthparent that doesn’t want to be found should not be left in peace, nor an adoptee left to live their life without interference.
The case of the adult birthparent or adoptee who does not want contact is exactly the same as the case of any person who does not wish to be contacted by anyone else. They say “I don’t desire contact.” If the person ignores this request you ask again, and then you seek a restraining order.
When you sign up with a dating site, the dating site doesn’t promise you permanent anonymity after you connect with someone. When you take a job, your employer is not expected to prevent your coworkers from contacting you at home. So why is an adoption agency running interference between adult adoptees and birthparents? Answer: for the agency’s own reasons. Talk to any birthparent – does the agency give a damn about them after they have the kid? No, they do not. EXCEPT should the kid try to contact the birthparent, then suddenly the agency is all Full Service 24/7 Protection. Why is that?
ALSO, there have been cases of adoptees marrying and/or having children with their own biological siblings… because they were unable to discover beforehand that they were related. Just the latest:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2057081/Engaged-couple-discover-brother-sister-parents-meet-days-wedding.html
What you see here is that adoptive anonymity might serve the birthparents, and does serve the agency, but it does NOT serve the adoptee or their offspring. It also turns on the prejudice that the adoptee is somehow not trustworthy. I know plenty of adoptees who found their birthparents only to be rejected, and who simply live with that and go on.
Finally, just “turning over” medical information is not enough. Medical conditions arise and change over time – what good is it learning your 50 year old birthmother has no history of cancer, only to remain ignorant that she is diagnosed with breast cancer at 52? And one of the things adoptees may need are donations of marrow, blood, or organs. I have relationships with all my blood siblings. They know me. If I needed a kidney I could ask them and they’d know who I was. Now picture a last-minute contact from a stranger who claims to be related – how’s THAT gonna work out for the adoptee. And the other way round works too – if one of my siblings needs a kidney, hey, here I am, another potential donor.
No, this “secrecy” nonsense is just a happy frosting applied to a tough situation by adoption agencies seeking to smooth everything over and keep folks from asking questions. The simple solution is to recognize that adult adopted citizens have the right to all information pertaining to them upon request: what they do with it, and the relationships they build, that’s THEIR business, not some private adoption agency’s.
Yeah I’m just never gonna agree with you on this one. C’est la vie.
I’m very glad my cubicle at work is tucked in a corner where no one can see me, because I was tearing up quite a bit while listening to this at work today. Seriously moving.
Thank you for sharing your story. And an even bigger thank you to both your moms for being willing to share their stories with everyone who listens.
Well Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire and Oregon have completely opened records, and so far no disasters.
This long awaited podcast was exceptionally moving, and very well done. Thanks Matt’s Mom and Mom for coming on and doing this show. I espeically enjoyed the closing, and the sound check at the end. I was secretly hoping that would happen!